“So we’re here in the Chan household, and we’re at prep day,” says Cherie Chan of CrossFit Verve, located in Denver, Colo. “We try to do this once a week when we have time to prep a bunch of meals or a bunch of food that will make it super easy for us to stick to what we do every day: Zone-Paleo foods.”

Join Cherie and husband Matt for an inside scoop on their nutrition. Today they shop and begin preparation for their meals.

Cherie adds a great tip for fruit and vegetables: prep them right after you buy them.

“If I put these in the fridge the way that they are after buying them from the grocery store, what notoriously happens is I will waste about half of them because I wouldn’t have had the time to chop them and prepare a meal,” she says.

Matt and Cherie Chan show how a little planning, organization and preparation can help you keep on track with your nutrition.

Anyone who wants the full benefit and results of CrossFit must understand--and then act on the information--that nutrition is the foundation for all the other work you do in the name of… Continue Reading

With a ridiculous travel schedule, HQ trainer Pat Sherwood may not always know exactly where he is or how to pronounce the name of his location, but he does know how to eat well in… Continue Reading

38 Comments on “Nutrition Prep Day with the Chans: Part 1”

Great suggestions. My wife and I do something similar with the meat; either I grill it or she bakes it. Having things ready to go makes my lunch prep for work easier and dinners require little thought and less time. We haven't done the vegetable prep but I think we may start.

Having meals on hand makes stopping at the drive through or ordering something a less frequent occurrence. Plus with kids there never seems to be enough time to get a good dinner in.

I try and do that with veggies - at least the breaking them down into usable bits part - although I really do enjoy the prep part of making a meal (not the cleanup).

I'm trying to get into the habit of making a large batch of meat/bone broth at the beginning of the week to use as a beverage with lunch. Pressure cooker is making my life easier (my traditional bone broth recipe takes a very, very long time to cook with a normal pot).

Must be nice to be able to spend like that on food. Back when I was working in the Aerospace Industry I was doing that very thing. Prepping 2x/week. Now that I'm making way less, there's no way unless I ate about a 4-6oz chicken breast and a bag of those frozen broccoli packets that you nuke 4x/day with some egg whites for breakfast. Hmmmm...that might actually work. I may end up turning into a chicken but I guess there are worse things.

Interesting article. But I couldn't help noticing Matt's comment about how they use the microwave to reheat meals (for convenience, of course). You may be interested to read this well-researched article on health hazards associated with microwave cooking.http://www.health-science.com/microwave_hazards.html

Great idea but brutal grilling/cooking techniques. The Chan's spend so much time and are so dedicated to refining and perfecting their fitness and physique, why not take a bit of extra time to learn how to properly prepare the foods they will use to fuel their rigorous training regimen?

#6 Erich,
I find grilled chicken breast is good for days (I've stretched it to a week) as long as it's refrigerated shortly after prep. Never had a problem.

Fish won't last as long...I don't like going beyond 2 to maybe 3 days. I don't eat a ton of red meat but would think that'd be similar to chicken.

If you want to grill some chicken, buy at least a pound and then you can have 3-4 meals. Even if you're out of school for many years and never developed cooking skills, grilling is EZ and good for you.

#7 James,

Spending $135 (I understand there's other $$ they have spent with spices, non-perishables that weren't included with $135) breaks down as such:

$20/day = $10/day/person = $3.50/meal = NOTHING in cost. I dare someone to live on the run and eat fairly well that effectively. $300/month/person for food is really good.

It can be overwhelming to step into your local Outpost/Whole Foods and see all the organic prices. Do some legwork to find out which items are better to buy the expensive stuff and what you can do with frozen or regular fresh veggies/fruit. As you saw in the video, you don't have to spend tons of $$ on decent quality food.

It's great to get a peek into someone else's kitchen and see their process. A few comments:

1) I haven't found that i can keep the food tasting fresh and delish for more than 3 or 4 days. For that reason, I do this prep 2x per week.

2) I think the perception that Whole Foods is more expensive is wrong. I did a head to head about 3 months ago (WF, Walmart, Target, King Soopers). Eggs, milk, almond butter, and many organic vegetables were cheaper at WF. flat out. Milk was a DOLLAR a gallon cheaper at WF than Walmart. And, at WF you can shop the whole store and not worry about trans fat.

The Chans practice what they preach. On a car ride to Montrose about a year ago we stopped at a gas station at 8pm at night. It was freezing cold outside. Matt opened up a cooler in the back of the truck, pulled out a food scale (which Cherie had packed), and weighed out their protein for dinner. Awesome.

#18 Troy...I'll have to examine my receipts a little closer. But I remain skeptical that an average of $10/day will get me 5 meals.

The cost of living in So Cal really hit home the other day when I realized I was spending $1.50 on bell peppers and they weren't even organic!! Hell Trader Joe's sold them in 2-packs and they were still about a buck a piece. I recently went to a Mexican market in Culver City and they were less than a dollar. WTH is everyone else's problem? I'm going to have to start looking at the mom-n-pop stores for my produce. There are still a couple around. A Sprouts is going to open soon in my area but since it's still Redondo Beach, I don't have much hope in prices being much lower. I'll have to go to the one in Torrance to get an idea on what they charge.

I based my calculation on their grocery bill. The video implied they shop 1/week for the bulk of their food.

I'm sure there are incidentals and other items they buy throughout the week. The main point someone can take from the video: with some planning you can eat pretty well and it doesn't have to break the bank. Planning/preparation is the key.

First of all, awesome video that was very helpful. I look forward to part 2.
Second, I tried to show my wife the video but couldn't get it to play in Quicktime or Windows Media. Has anyone else had any trouble playing the video?

To paraphrase Pat Sherwood, debating over a person's diet is as incendiary as debating over a person's religion. The price of food, microwave vs no microwave, organic vs local vs big box: this could start WWIII!

The CrossFit Journal is a chronicle of the empirically driven, clinically tested, and community developed CrossFit program. Our mission is to provide a venue for contributing coaches, trainers, athletes, and researchers to ponder, study, debate, and define fitness and collectively advance the art and science of optimizing human performance.